


Handed Down or Made By Hand

by mylittlecthulhu (marineko)



Category: Arashi (Band), Kimi wa Pet | Tramps Like Us, Yamada Tarou Monogatari | The Story of Yamada Taro (TV)
Genre: Japanese Drama - Freeform, M/M, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2018-03-17 08:42:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3522830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marineko/pseuds/mylittlecthulhu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mimura Takuya (from drama!YamaTaro) knew Goda Takeshi (from drama!KimiPet) a long time ago; when they meet again, they learn just how much they've changed over time. Originally written for the 2012 Sakumoto LJ Comm's Jun Birthday Fic contest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Handed Down or Made By Hand

_So what is love, then? Is it dictated or chosen?  
_ _Does it sing like the hymns of a thousand years  
Or is it just pop emotion?  
_\- “Mystery”, Indigo Girls  
  
 **1.**  
  
He's skipping stones and counting the number of times his pebble bounces off water before sinking into it. A couple of girls that were walking past him stop to look, before continuing on their journey. They're talking about one of their boyfriends and how they're going to be together for ever, and all he could think of is how stupid people can be sometimes. Nothing is forever.  
  
He had known that when he had first given up his future for Sumire. He had known that; so why did he do it anyway? He doesn’t really have an answer, except the ones that didn't make sense. Like the fact that it had just felt like the right thing to do at the time. Like the fact that Sumire needed him more than the school he was going to. Like the fact that he wasn't quite ready to let go just yet.  
  
It would be two years before he finally lets go, and now he’s aimlessly skipping stones and wondering _what if_.  
  
“Giant - it’s Giant, isn’t it?”  
  
He bristles at the nickname; he’d been Momo for so long that sometimes he forgets that he’s Takeshi, who had once been called Giant, after his namesake. He turns to see the young man looking back at him; the face is pleasant enough, but not one that he immediately recognises. He supposes that it isn’t surprising; no one had called him Giant since elementary school, after all. This man before him must have been from then.  
  
He straightens up. “No one’s called me that in years,” he says briskly.  
  
“Goda-kun,” the man amends. “You probably don’t remember me, I’m -”  
  
“Mimura-kun,” he interrupts, remembering. “We were in the same class.” He hates reunions and catching up and ‘so what are you doing now?’ but he smiles and says, “it’s been awhile.”  
  
“It has, hasn’t it,” Mimura agrees. He’s looking at the lake. “Funny to see you here, of all places.” Takeshi doesn’t know if any one place would be stranger than another, so he doesn’t respond. “So,” Mimura continues, and Takeshi almost winced as the question that everyone eventually asks appears. “You’re still dancing?”  
  
At least it’s that, he thinks. Mimura isn’t asking if he’s famous, or if he’s given up. Just whether he’s still dancing. Simple. He starts to nod, but then shrugs. “Kind of. I... took a break couple of years ago, and am just starting again. It’s hard, though, getting back into it.” He doesn’t know why he’s telling the truth instead of giving some perfunctory answer, but he feels that Mimura is someone he could talk to. Which is strange, since they hadn’t really known each other all that well in school. He had been absent more often than not, before his mother pulled him out of school to join a dance academy.  
  
“I see.” Mimura seems to consider his reply seriously, thinking for a moment before saying, “well. If it’s Goda-kun, I think you’ll make it.”  
  
He doesn’t know how to tell Mimura about how there are younger, better people coming up all the time, how everyone knew that he’d blown the chance of a lifetime to chase after a woman who loved him like a pet, how he might never fulfil the potential he once had. So he keeps his silence, but it seems like Mimura understands, anyway.  
  
“You don’t have to be anyone but yourself,” Mimura says, smiling up at him. “Someone told me this sometime ago, and I think it applies. Don’t worry too much about what could have been; do what you love to do, now. Just do the best that the person you are now can do - there’s no point in regretting past choices, is there?”  
  


 **2.**  
  
It’s probably serendipity, the fact that he’d come across Goda that day. A fortunate accident. That evening he had received an acceptance letter to a university that he had wanted to get in - but he’d had to leave Japan, and even though he knew that Tarou would have received the same letter, his best friend would never leave. He hadn’t known what to do, until he met Goda.  
  
It might have taken Goda awhile to remember him, but Mimura remembers Goda clearly. His grace, his cheerful optimism, his friendliness. These things were conditional, Mimura knew, but still he hadn’t been able to forget them throughout the years. Goda interested him, and Mimura never forgets the things and people he finds interesting.  
  
The best that the person he is now could do - Tarou had been the one who had told him that, but it’s only when he’d told Goda the same thing that Mimura realises how much he’s set on going overseas. Even if it means leaving Tarou behind. Because there are things, as he suspects that Goda is starting to learn, that one should never have to regret.

  
  


**3.**  
  
“We meet again,” Mimura says emotionlessly, although he breaks into a smile when Goda gives him an amused look.  
  
“You’re not stalking me, are you?”  
  
“Oh, no. It’s just interesting that we keep bumping into each other, isn’t it?”  
  
“Hmm.” Goda doesn’t tell Mimura, but he spends a lot of time in places he thinks Mimura might go to, just in case they might meet. The words that Mimura had said to him had stuck, somehow. “I thought about what you said.” Mimura just looks at him. Goda continues, “I said I was dancing again, but I was just half-heartedly trying to pick up where I left off, and I get so frustrated when I find things that used to come so easy are getting harder, now. But I guess if I want it back, I have to work at it. I can’t just start and stop whenever I want. I’m starting again, from the basics.”  
  
“I’ll look forward to seeing your progress, then,” Mimura says, before remembering that he’s leaving, and wouldn’t be around for much longer.

  
  


**4.**  
  
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”  
  
Instead of replying, Mimura asks a question of his own.  
  
“Why do you spend time here with me?”  
  
“You’re interesting.” Goda glances at him. “Why do you?”  
  
“The same, I suppose.”.  
  
The two of them are sitting on a bench facing the lake. They’ve met several times since the first, and Goda is starting to feel as if they’ve never been apart. It’ll be strangely empty, he thinks, when Mimura leaves.  
  
He makes Mimura laugh. While with Mimura, he isn’t the perpetually sunny person that he’s been with Sumire, he’s close enough for him to wonder if it’s real. He understands that he had been putting on a role, when it came to Sumire, but he’d acted it out so well that he almost believes it himself. He tries not to, with Mimura. But it’s difficult, because sometimes he thinks he’s forgotten who he really is.  
  
Realising that Mimura hasn’t really answered his question, he decides to change the subject. “Hey,” he says. “Say you’ve been pretending to be this other person for so long, that parts of their personality has actually started to join with your own... what does that make you in the end? The other person, or the person you originally was?”  
  
“Both, I think.” Mimura says it like it’s so simple. “That person eventually becomes you, so it’s not pretend anymore. Maybe.”  
  
Both, Goda thinks. It sits better with him than the thought that he’s a fraud, anyway. He doesn’t want to think that his feelings for Sumire weren’t real. They were; it’s just how he acted when he was with her that hadn’t been real, sometimes. But only sometimes.  
  
“I have something to tell you,” he says.

  
  


**5.**  
  
When Mimura first heard the rumour that Goda had given up on dance to live with an older woman, he had been surprised, but in all that time he had never suspected the truth of their relationship.  
  
“So...” he says, still trying to wrap the idea around his head. “You were her pet.”  
  
“Something like that, yeah.”  
  
“...I don’t know what to think.”  
  
“I’ll give you some options, then,” Goda said lightly. “a), you think I’m weird but you’re glad that phase of my life is over, and can we just forget it ever happened; b), you’re disgusted with the very idea of being kept like, well, a pet, and never want to see me again; or -”  
  
“I’m not -”  
  
“or c),” Goda interrupts, not letting Mimura speak yet, “you’re intrigued with the idea and now that I’m no longer with her, you wonder if I’m interested in becoming yours?” He pauses, surprised at the tinge of hope that came with the third option. He had meant it as a joke, but after saying it out loud, he realises that if Mimura’s leaving, then he wants to go with him.  
  
He waits a long time for Mimura to speak again. When Mimura finally does, it’s in a low, uncertain voice, one that he isn’t used to hearing from the other man.  
  
“Maybe my answer is d), none of the above,” Mimura says vaguely, getting up. “It’s getting late, I need to go.”

  
  


**6.**  
  
“Do you love him?”  
  
Mimura is taken aback by the question. His mind draws a blank; he has no idea what Goda is talking about. He’s still a little uneasy after the last time they had met – even if Goda had been joking, the fact that he actually _considered_ the idea gave him a pause. Now he feels extremely aware of how close they’re standing to each other, even if they’re just leaning against the railing, looking over at the lake before them. Sometimes he would turn to look at Goda, and find himself uncomfortably warm, contemplating the grace of his form. Goda looks nothing like Tarou, he thinks.  
  
“Who?”  
  
Goda looks at him strangely, an expression between confusion and something else – annoyance? “That boy. The one you don’t want to leave behind.”  
  
“Tarou? He isn’t a _boy_ \- well, not anymore than we are.”  
  
“I’ve seen him, you know,” Goda says. “I was on my way back from the dance studio and saw you walking with him, and someone else. A girl.”  
  
“Ikegami,” Mimura replies. “She and Tarou are engaged, now.” He smiles. “I suppose that answers your question.”  
  
“Not really. I asked if _you_ loved _him_.”  
  
Mimura is quiet for a long while. “I suppose I did, once. Or perhaps I just thought I did.” He shrugs. “What’s love, anyway?”  
  
Goda starts to answer, but hesitates. His brows draw close together in deep thought. “I don’t know,” he says wonderingly. “I really don’t.”  
  
They spend the rest of the day in silence, left to their own thoughts long into sunset. Mimura asks Goda if he’d like to have a drink together, but Goda declines, inviting Mimura to the dance studio, instead.  
  
“I have keys,” he says. “I’ll show you what I’ve been working on.”

  
  


**7.**  
  
Goda, Mimura thinks, is quite possibly the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

  
  


**8.**  
  
Goda wonders if what he had with Sumire was love. It definitely is – or had been – _something_ , but was it really love? They never really slept together after that first time, but it wasn’t as if he never desired her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know that she sometimes thought about it. And there’s affection – this much he is sure of – and a mutual sort of need, and desperation. He had needed that, the unconditional warmth, and acceptance, without the expectation for more. Almost as much as she did. But as a year passes, and then two... as Sumire learns to thaw and relax with others, as she slowly discovers that she isn’t as cold a person as she had been led to believe, she began to need him less. As for him, he had wanted _more_ , but perhaps, he thinks now, not necessarily more of her. Just – more.  
  
Feeling Mimura’s eyes on him, his movements grow sharper, more fluid when he needs to be. The world fades away, and there is just them, his body spelling out a story, and Mimura’s eyes following every arc of it, burning.

  
  


**9.**  
  
 _I’m Takeshi_ , Goda says, as he bows after the performance. Mimura understands; something in him clenches as he breathes in, feeling like his heart is too large to be kept in a form that’s merely human.  
  
“I’m Takuya.”

  
  


**10.**  
  
It truly is a waste, Takuya thinks, that Takeshi had given up on dance when he did. He could not fault Takeshi for wanting to stay, though – not when he himself feels conflicted about leaving Tarou.  
  
It’s probably ironic that the two people that would capture his interest would shine so brilliantly in their own way, and yet they’d rather let it fade than leave those they cared about. He wonders if he ever really got over Tarou, and if what he had felt for Tarou was real, then what does it mean now that he feels for Takeshi?  
  
He thinks about his own decision to leave, and wonders if his own love, or affection, isn’t strong enough, because he is capable of doing what Tarou and Takeshi couldn’t.

  
  


**11.**  
  
“Who’s that?” Tarou asks, as his eyes follow Takeshi, who is walking out of the Mimura compound.  
  
“Takeshi,” Takuya answers promptly, and reconsiders. “Goda. He’s an old friend.”  
  
“Mmm.” Tarou sounds like he’s considering something. Sometimes there is a light in Tarou’s eyes that makes Takuya suspects that Tarou knows a lot more than he lets on, but then it quickly disappears, and it’s back to the same round-eyed earnestness and the innocent smile. Between the two of them, it’s Takuya who is the canny one, who sorts through Tarou’s muddled emotions and all the things Tarou’s too dense to realise himself. If Takuya hadn’t helped Tarou figure out his feelings for Ikegami, he doubted that anything would happen between the two.  
  
So why is it so hard, he wonders, to figure his own feelings out?

  
  


**12.**  
  
"When we were in school together,” Takeshi says, “I thought you were stuck up. You never tried to get to know anyone. You were always polite, but also distant. You smiled all the time, but your smile never seemed real at all.”  
  
“You were too friendly,” Takuya says. “You don’t always show up at school, but when you do, you flit in and out like some kind of shining thing, and you’re always talking to the people that surround you – and there always were people surrounding you – like you’ve been around the whole time.”  
  
“They don’t really know me,” Takeshi murmurs, remembering. “But there’s no harm in being nice. I was just passing the time, there.”  
  
“I guess,” Takuya replies, “so was I.”  
  
It’s true – school had been just a way to pass the time, something he had to do. Only the days when Takeshi had showed up at school had been a little bit brighter, and after Takeshi left, the days were uninteresting once more.  
  
And then he met Tarou.

  
  


**13.**  
  
“When are you leaving?”  
  
“Next spring. It’s months away.”

  
  


**14.**  
  
“What if that person – Yamada – likes you back?”  
  
“Why are you asking me this?”  
  
“Well, no offense – but most of the time you’re wearing the same fake smile. People can’t tell what you’re really thinking. Maybe he likes you, but he doesn’t know if you ever felt anything real for him, so he moved on to that Ikegami girl.”  
  
“That’s –” Takuya stops, allowing for a small smile. A real one – rare, Takeshi thinks, but it’s more resigned than joyful. “Quite impossible. I know him better than he knows himself. He wouldn’t even know how he feels for Ikegami if it wasn’t for me.”  
  
Takeshi shoots Takuya another of his looks, but doesn’t say anything when Takuya changes the subject.

  
  


**15.**  
  
“Whatever happened, anyway? With that woman you were living with.”  
  
 _That woman_. Takeshi bites back a smile at Takuya’s choice of words. He probably should be offended on Sumire’s behalf, but Takuya had sounded almost _petulant_ , and it’s... interesting, he supposes. Then he thinks of Sumire, and he no longer feels like smiling.  
  
“I loved her,” he says, carefully, “in a way. It’s just – a different kind of love.”  
  
“Like a pet?” Takuya sounds doubtful.  
  
“Maybe. I guess. An almost intense devotedness, yes. I’d get jealous if she’s too close to anyone else, and I’d want her to notice me all the time. I wanted to be the one to comfort her, the one she’d come crying to when things are bad.”  
  
“Isn’t that just love?”  
  
Takeshi shakes his head. “It’s – different.” He sounds frustrated, like he wants to explain, but couldn’t find the words. “I wanted to _belong_ to her, to let her shape me into whatever she wanted, whatever she needed me to be. That isn’t really love, is it?”  
  
“Were you happy?”  
  
“...yes.”  
  
“But you left.”  
  
“I guess I got selfish, in the end.” Takeshi turns, looks at Takuya in the eye. “I can’t be someone’s dog forever.”  
  
“You wanted to dance.”  
  
“That, too.”

  
  


**16.**  
  
Takeshi doesn’t even know what he says that’s funny, it’s just an old joke that Junpei once told him. A long time ago, in another life. He doesn’t even think it’s all that funny now, but Takuya does, because he throws his head back and laughs.  
  
There’s something mesmerising about the sight, and Takeshi stands there, a little bit dazed, as he watches Takuya laugh.  
  
It takes a while before he realises that it’s the first time he sees Takuya smile, really and properly _smile_ , and that it might just be the most dazzling sight he would ever see.

  
  


**17.**  
  
“When are you leaving?”  
  
“Next month.”

  
  


**18.**  
  
Do people really get over lost loves, Takeshi wonders, or do they carry it around with them for the rest of their lives? An emptiness, where the piece of the puzzle that once completed you no longer fits.  
  
He has an important audition coming up, and he needs to be – or feel – whole when the time comes. He can’t afford to audition with unstable emotions, or running on empty. So he had gone to see Sumire, in hopes of finding closure.  
  
She’s doing well – he had left knowing that she would be fine, this time. That she wouldn’t be hurt from his absence. He supposes that it’s quite possible that she carries an emptiness around with her, too, but when she had smiled at him it had been wide and genuine, and she had been truly happy to know that he’s dancing again.  
  
“You look good,” she had said. “Something’s changed, and it suits you.”  
  
The first thing he had thought of was Takuya, but he shook the thought away; Takuya isn’t a presence that should affect him any more than Sumire. The reason he had left had been because he no longer wanted to live up to another person’s ideals, after all.  
  
But Sumire is doing fine, and Takuya is leaving soon.  
  
Maybe he’s the only one who feels lost.

  
  


**19.**  
  
It isn’t that there isn’t a place for Tarou in his life. But where there had once been an ideal version of their relationship, which can’t be altered or severed by anything, there is now something else – a mutual respect and affection between close friends. He no longer interferes in Tarou’s life; Tarou has Ikegami for that, now. They had been once a unit, with Ikegami following them around – but now it’s the other way around. He supposes that if he isn’t allowed to mourn unrequited feelings, at least he could mourn the way their friendship had changed over time.  
  
He thinks about the question Takeshi had asked him once, about what would happen when a person pretended to be someone else for a long time. Sometimes he wonders if he’s pretending, when he was at school, or when he’s with Tarou. It isn’t as if he’s trying to be someone he isn’t, though. It’s just – he doesn’t know how to act with others, sometimes, and he’d try too hard, or force himself to smile and to be friendly even when what he really feels is bewilderment. Sometimes he wonders if he was nice to others because it’s actually the kind of person he is, or because he wanted them to like him. Sometimes he wonders if Tarou is only his friend because he pushes himself into Tarou’s life.  
  
With Takeshi, though, he’s surprised to find himself at ease – even during the times he find it hard to talk without staring, or when he finds himself unusually tense when they’re too close. Even then, he feels like he doesn’t have to try so hard. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s leaving, and isn’t expecting to make a lasting connection anyway. Maybe it’s Takeshi. Either way, he’s growing comfortable with their frequent meets, and looks forward to it every time.  
  
The thought of leaving comes with a gnawing emptiness in his stomach that feels too much like dread.

  
  


**20.**  
  
“Where were you, yesterday? I tried calling you, but your phone was switched off.”  
  
“Oh,” Takeshi says, eyes darting away. “I was busy.”  
  
Takuya wants to ask, but Takeshi looks like he doesn’t want to talk about it, so he leaves it be. “I see.”  
  
“I went to see Sumire last week,” Takeshi adds, offering the information as if to console. Takuya hadn’t thought that he needed consoling, but all of a sudden he thinks that it isn’t consoling at all.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s just something I needed to do, I guess. She seems happy enough.” Takeshi looks wistful. A breeze passes by them, lifting his soft curls. Takuya smiles at the sight. “That looks good on you.”  
  
Takuya freezes; at first he thinks that he had spoken aloud. “What?”  
  
“Your smile. It looks good on you.”  
  
“You’ve seen me smile before.”  
  
“Not like that. Your smiles are usually kind of reserved. This time it’s soft, maybe even wistful.”  
  
“...you’re an idiot.”  
  
Takeshi just flashes him a grin, all bright and cheeky. “I’ve heard that before.”  
  
“You’re impossible.”  
  
“I’ve heard that before, too.”

  
  


**21.**  
  
“When are you leaving?”  
  
“At the end of the month.”

  
  


**22.**  
  
“Momo.”  
  
“...what did you call me?”  
  
“Are you still – him?”  
  
“No. Maybe. Sometimes. I guess.”  
  
“Do you want to be?”  
  
Their gazes never waver from each other’s eyes, each trying to find the other’s true selves.  
  
“...I want to be Takeshi.”  
  
Takuya remains silent, waiting for Takeshi to continue.  
  
“But I don’t know if I remember who he is.”

  
  


**23.**  
  
Takeshi had visited the Mimura house before, but it’s the first time he arrives when Mimura is working. He stays at the doorway, even though Isogai had told him that he’s allowed to interrupt. It would be a pity to do so, he thinks, as he observes how Takuya looks when he’s focused and concentrated like that, when he isn’t trying to be whoever he thinks he’s supposed to be. When he just _is_.  
  
He thinks of how Takuya understands beauty and the uses of space, how sometimes what you leave out makes what remains all the more meaningful. He thinks of how Takuya might see the world, how there is more to Takuya than the teasing smiles and carefully chosen words, how when it comes to Takuya, perhaps it doesn’t matter what is left out and what remains – he wants to know it all.  
  
He thinks about what it means, and slips away before Takuya notices him.

  
  


**24.**  
  
:”I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Takuya says. “Everyone’s molded by other people’s expectations, I think, in one way or another. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t bring the very core of who you are into the making of you. So – you can be Momo, but you can also be Takeshi.”  
  
“At the same time?”  
  
“Yes.” Takuya smiles. “Why not?”  
  
Takeshi haven’t spoken of his dancing in weeks, and Takuya never asks. But he’s working harder at it these days, and he thinks that Takuya knows.  
  
“What did Yamada say,” he inquires, “about you leaving?”  
  
Takuya thinks about it. “He’s pleased, I think. Not out of a want to see me go, or anything like that. But because I’m actually reaching out for something, for once. That’s what he tells me, anyway.”

  
  


**25.**  
  
Isogai is insufferable for most of the week, subtly – and sometimes not-so-subtly – bringing about the subject of Takeshi at every chance. Takuya brushes off most of Isogai’s inquiries, or smiles at the butler without revealing much. Really, Isogai is becoming as concerned about Takeshi the way he had been about Tarou, once.  
  
Takuya doesn’t know if he’s more amused or annoyed by the attention, but he is no longer able to deny that every time he thinks of Takeshi, the strange anxiety he’s been pushing down keeps growing larger.  
  
He’s beginning to understand what it means, but he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do about it.

  
  


**26.**  
  
“Say we’re puzzle pieces,” Takeshi says, haltingly. “And sometimes we meet people, and they just – fit. And then they’re not there anymore, and even though you were fine when they hadn’t been there before, now you’re suddenly aware of this gap where they used to be.”  
  
“Is it really possible, though, to fit so perfectly?”  
  
“Well, maybe we help things out. Maybe we become a bit of what that person wants us to be. Maybe we change a little, both of us, in order to fit into each other’s lives.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
“But when they’re gone, the shape of who they were remains, right? And you can’t seem to unmake it.”  
  
“Maybe,” Takuya says. “Maybe you might meet someone, and maybe they don’t fit perfectly either. But they might have a gap – a space of their own, to fill. Maybe the shape of both of your puzzle pieces could adapt to fit each other.”  
  
“Maybe.”  
  
They are standing so close to each other, it would not take much to touch, to hold. But it isn’t time, they think, and maybe there won’t be time. For now, they each think that the other understands, and maybe that’s enough.

  
  


**27.**  
  
“When are you leaving?”  
  
“It’s supposed to be in a few days.”  
  
“...supposed to be?”  
  
“I might stay.”  
  
Takuya looks down, and away, as he speaks. An unbelievably rare moment of shyness. Takeshi leans slightly, but only touches his forehead to Takuya’s.  
  
“That,” he says, in what Sumire might say is a Momo-like voice, “would be a very bad thing.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because the results of my audition came out this morning. I got placed in the school I wanted to go to.” He steps back, and passes a letter from his pocket to Takuya.  
  
“This... isn’t too far from where I’m going.”  
  
“An hour, by bus,” Takeshi confirms. “I checked.”  
  
“...when are you leaving?”  
  
“In a month or so.” Takeshi grins. “When are you leaving?”  
  
Takuya’s smile is slow, and soft, and genuine. “In a few days.”

  
  


**28.**  
  
Takeshi leans against the railing. He has smooth, rounded pebbles in his pocket, but he doesn’t throw them. Instead he watches the sky above him, and thinks of Takuya, in a plane to a place so far away from the life he had lived in the last two years. He thinks of the coincidence of bumping into Takuya at the same place he is standing, and how that one moment changes everything, somehow.  
  
 _What’s love, anyway?_ Takuya had asked him that once, and he hadn’t known how to answer.  
  
Perhaps he still doesn’t know, he thinks, but he’s pretty sure that they’re going to find out.


End file.
